← Cybersecurity Headlines
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From the CISO series, it's Cybersecurity Headlines
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these are the cybersecurity headlines for Wednesday, March 11, 2026 I'm Rich Stroffelino, NSA and Cyber Command head Confirmed In a rare floor vote, the US Senate voted 71 to 29 to confirm Army Lieutenant General Joshua Rudd as the head of US Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency. The post had been vacant for almost a year, with Lt. Gen. William Hartman serving in an acting capacity. Rudd currently serves as the Deputy chief of US Indo Pacific Command and previously has held jobs in Special Forces leadership. He has no prior experience in signals intelligence or cyber operations. Rudd will continue the dual hat leadership of Cyber Command and the nsa, with the record sources saying. President Trump told aides he settled on a clean 18 month extension for the leadership format. Senator Ron Wyden called for the floor vote as part of his opposition to Rudd's nomination, citing his lack of experience and vague answers about using the NSA's surveillance tools for warrantless spying on U.S. citizens. Russians targeting encrypted messaging app users the Netherlands Defense Intelligence and Security Service and the General Intelligence and Security Service published details about a campaign by entities tied to Russian state actors targeting users of signal and WhatsApp. This didn't crack either app's end to end encryption. Instead, Dutch intelligence saw Signal users targeted by people posing as the app's support team, warning specific users about data leaks and trying to get their PIN codes. These codes could be used to register a new device and intercept new messages. On WhatsApp, the attacks tried to trick people into using the link device feature to gain access to all messages. OpenAI rolls out vulnerability scanner it was big news when Anthropic rolled out vulnerability scanning in Claude code. And so it's a big deal when OpenAI did the same now with Codex. Codec Security was previously known as Aardvark in private beta testing since last year and now available as a research preview to ChatGPT Pro Enterprise Business and EDU customers. In testing, OpenAI said it found over 10,000 high severity issues with codec security, including in widely used projects like Chromium, OpenSSL, PHP and Gnutls. Anthropic's announcement had stock market implications. We'll see if that becomes part of the story with Codex Security. Finns warned of persistent cyber espionage, according to a new security assessment from the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service. The country's tech sector, government and research institutions face sustained operations from Russian and Chinese intelligence services. The assessment painted a bleak picture, stating that the country faces continual attempts at cyber espionage with no prospect of such operations subsiding even in the long term. These attacks are attempting to steal sensitive research and intellectual property, supplement traditional espionage efforts that were scuttled after Finland expelled Russian diplomats and spreading misinformation as part of larger influence operations. And now, thanks to today's episode sponsor Dropzone AI remember yesterday's 3am threat intel? Here is how it plays out with Dropzone AI. The threat intelligence drops dropzone picks it up, turns it into a threat hunt and runs it across your sim, EDR and cloud data while your team sleeps. By morning, your analysts have answers, not a backlog. That is the AI Threat Hunter, the newest agent on the team, debuting at RSAC booth 455 South Expo Hall. To learn more, head on over to dropzone AI. Meta acquires Multbook you'll be forgiven if you've already forgotten about the AI flavor of the week that was Moltbook. This was a Reddit clone designed for use by AI agents, created by Matt Schlicht and Ben Parr. Well, Meta didn't forget them acquiring the platform and the team behind it in an undisclosed deal. Schlicht and Part will roll into Meta's Superintelligence Labs unit on March 16, with Multbook itself shutting down around the same time. Molt Book was notable in that it left its production database completely exposed at launch, revealing that a large number of accounts were created by just a few users and that it had no system for verifying if users were actually bots. This comes a month after OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger was hired by OpenAI CADNAP botnet targeting Asus routers. Researchers at Black Lotus Labs detailed the newly discovered CADNAP botnet active since August 2025. This currently has about 14,000 enabled devices communicating through a customized version of the CAdemlia distributed hash table protocol to conceal IP addresses. About half the botnet is made up of asus routers, with 60% of all infected devices in the U.S. cADNAP spreads through a malicious script that establishes persistence on routers and edge devices as a cron job that runs every 55 minutes. The researchers believe CADNAP is tied to the Doppelganger proxy service. Microsoft rolls out Passkey support for Entra. Microsoft says it will allow users to create device bound passkeys stored in the Windows hello container and authenticate using Windows hello. Each Entra account will register a passkey per device with support for multiple accounts per machine. These keys will be device bound and not synced Passkey support will go into a opt in global public preview in mid March and run through the end of April. After that it will roll out to government cloud environments starting in mid April through mid May. CISA Shortens Patch Time for Critical Bugs Generally when CISA adds a vulnerability to its known Exploited vulnerabilities catalog, federal civilian agencies have three weeks to patch. However, the latest round of additions have been given tighter deadlines. On Monday, CISA added a critical vulnerability for SolarWinds Web Help Desk, first discovered by Trend Micro back in September and has since been actively exploited. Agencies have until Thursday, March 12 to patch. CISA also added two vulnerabilities this week with a shorter two week patch deadline, one of which impacts Ivanti EPM and reportedly has been actively exploited since February Are you subscribed to The CISO Series YouTube channel? You're not? Well, it's not too late. Just search for ciso series on YouTube. You'll find us there. You'll see clips from all of our shows, original shorts and interviews, product demos, and the latest updates from the CISO series. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a thing. And if you're in the San Diego area, be sure to join us for our San Diego Cyber group meetup today, March 11th. You'll get to meet David Spark, fellow CISO Series fans, and maybe even get some sweet CISO Series swag. Full details are on our events page@cisoseries.com check it out if you're interested in coming. And if you have any thoughts about the news from today or about the show in general, be sure to reach out to us@feedbackisoseries.com we'd love to hear from you. Reporting for the CISO Series, I'm Rich Stroffelino, reminding you to have a super Sparkly day.
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Cybersecurity headlines are available every weekday. Head to cisoseries.com for the full stories. Behind the headlines.